The other day I was going through my email and realized that 98% of the offers that I received or the advertisements that I found in my inbox, were for girls. Pre-teen girls, teenage girls, college girls. Magazines, articles on helping your girls to build their self-esteem, to help them feel empowered in the world of business, everything centered around boosting and supporting our teen girls.
What about our teen boys though?
I’ve searched a variety of places online as well as the local library. If you’re looking for magazines for teen boys, you are limited to sports, music, and nature pretty much. Where are the magazines that help teach our young men how to be men? Where are the articles for them on peer pressure, on gender identification, dealing with others from different cultures, race and religion? Where are the articles that tell them it is okay to be their unique selves, that they do not need to conform to society’s image of a “tough guy” if that is not how they truly feel?
There are magazines geared toward pre-teen boys, most notably Boys Life from the Boy Scouts of America. Both of my boys tried the Scouts, didn’t like it, and dropped out. The last thing they are going to want to read is a magazine based primarily on scouting and scouting activities.
They both love music and skateboarding. There are plenty of magazines available on either topic. Not a problem.
But where are the magazines that help them deal with the same struggles that teenage girls have? Who is protecting them the way that we protect our teen girls? Teens do not go to mom and dad for answers to these questions. They go to their peers, or to a magazine to find their answers.
What about the teen boy whose father is away from home all the time? Or the teen boy who doesn’t have a father figure in his life? Where does he turn when he has questions about life? About dealing with peer pressure? About dealing with how to handle the school bully? Boys tend to go inside themselves and are hard to pin down when it comes to a one-on-one conversation.
I would love to know if you have come across any magazines designed specifically for our teen boys and the issues that they deal with on a regular basis. Homework, girls, peer pressure, why school is so important for their future, learning the proper way to treat women, you get the idea.
If there aren’t any magazines out there designed for our teenage boys, about to become the young men who will be running our country in several years, I think it’s high time that we step up and demand that there is a source of information made available to them that will help them through the teenage years. Do you agree?
About the Author
Kim Miller is the Chief Estrogen Officer at Life in a House of Testosterone in Richmond, VA. When she’s not running the teenagers all over town or taking their JackChi mix, Mollyanna, for the 100th walk of the day, she’s blogging, reading, dreaming of vacations in Fiji, or enjoying a glass of wine. She likes wine. Lots and Lots of wine.
